Top Ten Highlights from Apple’s Big Announcement

It is that time of year again, time for Apple’s annual extravaganza announcing their new products. This year was rumored to be the biggest event since their iMac release in the late 1990s. Yesterday’s announcement was pretty big and very exciting to follow. Since everyone on the Web is giving their highlights, I thought I would give everyone my top 5 things from the event:

1. New iPhone 6 design: My favorite design for an iPhone has always been the 3GS with its curved designed. It just felt comfortable in your hand. Apple has left the boxy design of recent iPhones behind and has curved all the edges. The glass front meets the metal back seamlessly. I can hardly wait to feel one in my hands!

2. Apple Watch: Everyone knew Apple was working on a watch, but as one tweet stated, they have come up with the smartest and most advanced smartwatch on the market. As with everything Apple does, they have come up with a very smart product that is just plain cool. The idea that I can tap the wrist of someone else wearing an Apple watch across the room or across the country is amazing. The fact that the watch will tap my wrist to tell me which way to go when following a GPS route is incredible.

3. Apple Pay: Apple has avoided adding NFC (Near Field Communications) in its devices for a long time claiming they would do it when the time was right. Well, that time is now. I already received an email from my bank saying I can ditch my credit card and pay with just a tap using Apple Pay on my iPhone. It is definitely a more secure way to pay with only an encrypted code being passed between your iPhone and the merchant, never your credit card info. The only bad thing is that it requires the new iPhone 6 with the NFC hardware built in.

4. Wi-Fi: Anyone who uses Wi-Fi with their iPhone knows it could be much better. Apple has made significant improvements to the Wi-Fi hardware on the iPhone 6 including adding 802.11c support. Better Wi-Fi means faster SIRI among other things. It is worth mentioning that they have also improved their LTE support when you are not using Wi-Fi.

5. iOS 8.0: The new Apple operating system for mobile devices (iOS) has significant improvements including health and home kits, enhanced braille support and even new voices for VoiceOver. Other useful changes for how things work include being able to reply to a message then being put back in the app you were in when you received the message.

I am looking forward to upgrading my 5s!

If you would like to learn more about Apple iOS devices, contact us to schedule an appointment with Marv Commerford or Jose Nonato, our Tech Tutors. They are available for appointments here at Second Sense or by phone at 312-236-9560 every Thursday.